What do People Even Mean by "Self Love?"

What do people even mean when they talk about self-love? I’ve seen the rhetoric around Valentine’s Day move from romantic and sexual love, to galentines and palentines, to self-love, and that is such a strange concept to me, because I think Americans have a great methodology of self-loathing (thank you, destructive Xtian hegemonic practices that don’t talk about healthy accountability at all), but I don’t even know what people are referring to at its core when they talk about self-love. Are they talking about self-acceptance? Are they talking about commitment to freedom from guilt and shame, especially for the past? Are they talking about the spiritual and psychological equivalent of body positivity or body neutrality, like accepting your flaws—which, it’s worthy to note, has also been extensively weaponized by some to just consistently excuse away abusive and shitty behavior? Are they talking about neutral acceptance of the fact that we all have healthy egos and take things personally once in a while? Do people really mean deeper attention to the body and to appearance when they talk about self-love—which legitimately, a lot of people of different gender expressions have had stigmatized (mostly also by cultural baggage or religious hegemony?) Are they talking about physical health?

And are “galentines” and “palentines” actually divesting from a push to spend money and consume in a capitalistic way, or are they just rebrands of pushes to buy buy buy? Do we even care anymore or are most average Americans so squeezed financially that while a lack of ability to buy goods in order to show love for another shouldn’t be judged, is it some kind of a financially flush and successful loving gesture if you can buy things for someone you love on a particular holiday? I guess that depends on your level of poverty trauma, right?

And then there’s what Valentine’s Day really is in context: a forced holiday in the middle of usually the coldest and most miserable month weather-wise, where people may not organically be feeling particularly romantic or sexual.

It’s weird. This is not from the perspective of yucking anyone’s yum, but the annual act of watching businesses’ gymnastics at trying to squeeze more money out of people during a short month, long winters, tax time and whatever else is so bizarre. As a small business owner myself, it brings to mind the misery of having to shoehorn everything into a “brand” and a cutesy conversational tone, being forced to participate in the attention economy and all of that.

Anyway, hopefully we won’t have taxes in a year. Lol. And at least now we know that all those people who sent themselves flowers to their workplace were the real heroes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

David Lynch Moments

Here's one of those weird peripherally personal stories about Lynch. When I was between 8-10 in the early 90s, my mother used to visit this elderly Romanian professor in Garden Grove. He was fluent in at least 4 or 5 languages but not too strong in English. Occasionally he and I were able to communicate in French. I was often bored in his house and I don't even think he had a working TV, or if there was my mom wouldn't let me watch it. He did however, seem to, like many immigrants I knew at the time, collect stacks of TV Guides--both for the English practice and the pop culture understanding. And that was the first place I learned about Twin Peaks. It seemed so sophisticated and grown-up, and I often got it mixed up with Knots Landing (also quite frequently on the cover of TV Guide at the time). I remember once reading an article about the show but I don't remember what it said. The visits to the Professor eventually ended. He had a home caregiver, and eventually he was...
Read more

Pop Culture Nation-A Recovered Memory of Cherished Treasures

Sometime between 2004 and Spring of 2006, I forcefully slammed a very large shoebox full of cassette tapes into the garbage can at my mother's house. You don't understand. Not just original cassette tapes. Mix tapes. During the peak hipster era of High Fidelity and Say Anything (much older, because yes we were already rehashing nostalgia), I committed a high crime against art and Xennial self-determination. I remember neither the context of the conflict, nor why I desired so strongly to sabotage myself. Was it later than then? Had I moved out again? Was it closer to 2008? I couldn't tell you. But I knew I was on one of my decluttering kicks. Inasmuch as I am messy and allow things to pile up (hopefully not to a hoarderly level) I have also gotten on occasionally forceful kicks of throwing my possessions away. Mostly because they reminded me of a part of myself that was over. Around this same time I think I dumped all the handwritten letters between me and beloved friends be...
Read more

Dream Brother

Twin seeds, planted in one long planter. Soon, a large landmass would stand between us. I wish I hadn't absorbed, from somewhere, that only the coasts mattered. And here we are. So much between us, including life & water under the bridge. I miss New York but I'm not built to root there. Just to visit. I think there was a time in my life when going there could've propelled me. They would've "gotten" what I was doing. But that was a small window of time. Now it's over. So much similar between us but so many parts of us different. And yet so much in common too. It feels like long ago but hey, obvious why we were pretty much "The Crayons" together. The queers in the 'burbs claw in the dark to find each other. Our absurd reads, endless summers and maybe the mystery trousers left in my trunk. Beach days, then you moved out right after we graduated. Things got tangible quickly. We did grownup things at 18 in a state where you didn't have to...
Read more